That’s how Jerry Stiller described his first meeting with his eventual wife and partner, the comedian/actress/playwright Anne Meara.

The headlines over the obituaries for Meara, who died yesterday at age 85, consistently described her as the mother of actor Ben Stiller. But she is also deservedly remembered for the warmth and wit of her 1960s comedy routines with Ben’s dad.

A lot of Stiller/Meara humor revolved around cultural differences that might not seem like a big deal today, but mattered a lot when I was growing up. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, an Irish Catholic girl marrying a Jewish guy was a big enough deal to provoke questions even if the couple were the last two humans on Earth, as the duo illustrated in a routine from the Ed Sullivan Show. (The routine covers the clip’s first three minutes.)

“Mixed” marriages, fear of nuclear annihilation – who else could combine those two particular strands of mid-century angst so deftly?

As the AP notes, Stiller and Meara, for all their gently wry humor, were very much a part of the cutting-edge 1950s Beat scene in Greenwich Village. Not that they were noticing at the time, as Meara observed years later:

But WE thought that when the Village was REALLY happening was in the ’20s, the F. Scott Fitzgerald days, before our time. People never know what’s going on while it’s happening. You think, during the Renaissance, people called it ‘The Renaissance’?

Nailed it — talk about polishing off the topic of time-wasting nostalgia!

Anne Meara certainly made things happen whenever she was in the room. Rest in peace, and thanks for the smiles.

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